


Things Done

by siegeofangels



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-09
Updated: 2008-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-18 13:59:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siegeofangels/pseuds/siegeofangels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the age of nineteen, on her own responsibility, Teyla Emmagan took her father's place as leader of her people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Done

**Author's Note:**

> The bits in italics are derived from the [Res Gestae Divi Augusti](http://www.skidmore.edu/classics/courses/1999spring/hi361f/resgestae.html). 

_At the age of nineteen, on her own responsibility, Teyla Emmagan took her father's place as leader of her people and among the Sestercian League, and successfully pushed to fruition a treaty between the six members of the League which secured for her people both sustenance and peace._

Teyla hears the song of the men returning from the hunting party, and it is not the triumphant noise of a successful hunt but the strong low chant of mourning, and she runs from her tent and is caught by Halling before she can throw herself on Tegan's body.

"It is the will of the Ancestors," Halling says, and "We must give thanks that he escaped the Wraith," and Teyla wrenches in his arms and flails blindly to hit him, no discipline, no technique, only anger and sorrow, for her father has died.

That night she spends curled up sobbing quietly while Charin strokes her hair, and it is the last childish indulgence she allows herself.

Tegan was well-liked among the people of the Ring; men and women come from many other worlds to attend his funeral celebration. Teyla conducts herself with calm; she sings Tegan's death-song herself, and watches the offworlders with careful eyes. When it is finished she moves among the people, accepting embraces, hands on her arms. She drifts to a stop near Nisha, as though by accident.

"The League," she says. "It meets in three days, does it not?"

He is already shaking his head when she continues, "I will take my father's place."

"Teyla," he says, looking over her head at someone near the fire. "There is no League. Not without Tegan."

She places a hand on his arm and he looks down at her; she says again: "I will take my father's place."

It takes constant travel, those three days, to visit five different worlds and smile enchantingly and speak strongly and make seventeen people understand that there would indeed be a meeting, that she would represent her people, that Tegan's work would not be lost.

Negotiations go on for an additional four days, and more than once she has to bite her tongue and melt out of a doorway when she hears someone say, " . . . Ancestor-worshiping crazies . . ." but in the end, it is done, and she marks on the parchment the Ring's symbol of Athos and the small six-petaled tey flower to sign herself and her people to the treaty.

(She is named for her father; the tey was his mark too.)

 _She arranged three marriages to mark the alliances of the League, and herself married twice for the same reason; she kept her people to the responsibilities and bounds of the treaty, and led the Athosians throughout ten years of peace and plenty._

And then the Wraith come.

The Nel are culled, despite their belief that the sharp terrain in which they live and raise their animals would protect them; when Orrin hears the news he withdraws from the League almost immediately.

The messenger tells Teyla this rather calmly, she thinks, for news that makes her world dissolve around her; Nisha only stayed in the League for the sake of Orrin, and for the memory of Tegan, and there is a limit to what a ten-years' gone memory can do.

With Nisha goes three reliable marriage partners for her people as well as the Athosians' main source of good strong blades; with Orrin goes fine flour and delicate clothing; with the Nel go meat and milk and hides. With all of them go the careful harmony of the six peoples: the Mai and the Emel fall into war over some slight, and the League is gone.

Teyla meditates with Halling that night, searching for direction. She cannot find her center, cannot stop thinking if they more need the candles (the Emel) or the tea (the Mai).

Halling's chanting only distracts her. "Leave me," she finally asks him just before dawn, and she sits in silence for a time, managing only a prayer to the Ancestors. _Please_ , she asks, and when she looks up there are strange men ducking into the tent--

 _She settled her people safely on three worlds, kept for them an alliance with the inhabitants of the City of the Ancestors and the people of Earth, and bore one daughter and two sons. The times she preserved her people from the Wraith are beyond counting._

 _At the time of writing she is in her sixty-third year._

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on Livejournal](http://teylafen.livejournal.com/133120.html).


End file.
